Webster’s online defines a coach as “one who instructs players in the fundamentals of a competitive sport and directs team strategy.”

This works for me for two reasons – the first reason is: GOOD COACHES ALWAYS STAY FOCUSED ON THE FUNDAMENTALS. Whether you are a football or basketball player or a podiatrist running a small business (which is what your practice is), you need to keep focused on the fundamentals if you are going to be successful. There is simply NO ALTERNATIVE. Well, there actually is an alternative – stressful and log days, lack of weekends because you are working, worries about cash flow, payments, non-payments, and not enough new patients. The list is endless.

Even Michael Jordan Needed a Coach

The wisest athletes and the wisest podiatrists know that talent can only take you so far. It isn’t possible to keep your body in shape or your mind in shape if you aren’t regularly exercising it. (Working excessively hard doesn’t count as exercising your mind. In fact, it simply makes you less effective.) You see, Michael Jordan knew he needed to work with his coach to become and to stay the best player in the game. I work with doctors every month as their marketing and business development coach and I am always intrigued to find that the Top Doctors are the ones who stay connected through attending the group coaching calls (or listening regularly to the CDs sent to them in the mail). They are also the doctors who make their individual coaching calls with me and never miss them.

The doctors that don’t get coached on the “small stuff” continue to struggle with the “big stuff” and tell me that they feel like they just can never get ahead of the business side of their practice. They would love to just see patients and be a doctor. Unfortunately for them, the world just doesn’t work that way.

It’s not just the fundamentals that require coaching. It is STRATEGY.

The definition of coach also includes a coach directing the team’s strategy. This is a key role I play with all of my Top Practices members. There IS a better way to market and build a practice and it is my key focus, in my role as coach, to my members. My job is to engage with my members to craft their personal strategy that is based on the Top Practices methodology. A key point here is that our methods change as technology changes and as the group learns. Top Practices is a Learning Organization with a central communication method – coaching calls.

Put Yourself in the Game

Whether you use a Mastermind Group like Top Practices, or you find another way to get coaching, it is an essential business activity that you simply can’t put off until later or ignore. Everyone needs a coach. I have a coach, too. The alternative is just not acceptable to the winners. And this is a huge competitive edge for those of us who “get it.”